HEL’s participation in the Advanced Automative Battery conference in Orlando

HEL participated for the first time in the AABC Conference in Florida, both having an exhibition booth and making a technical presentation by HEL's managing director Dr Jasbir singh.

Click here to view video.

The technical program for the conference is highly scientific in nature both strong commercial presence but also many academics in attendance. HEL's presentation that was delivered looked into the complementary role of adiabatic ("ARC-Type") calorimetery for battery thermal runaway testing and isothermal (controlled) measurement of heat release to provide the thermal management duty specification. HEL's standard BTC is now an established benchmark for runaway thermal testing of EV and other high energy batteries with the ability to test large batteries and packs.

The isothermal BTC version, iso-BTC, is relatively new generated a lot of interest among attendees and people were generally convinced that this is an essential part of the safety should be supplied. Knowing how much heat is generated when discharging Li-ion batteries can be used to design cooling systems controlled from a BMS. HEL's approach this form of heat measurement has the attraction of being on-line and providing a unique into the workings of batteries which developers can make use of to improve battery design.

Battery research for Electric Vehicles

By Dr Jasbir Singh

after a thermal "abuse" test in a BTC

There is a proliferation of conference events on Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries worldwide and we attended a conference and exhibition on EV batteries in London on 30-31 March.

This was well attended with visitors from many countries representing car manufacturers, universities, battery producers and service and instrument providers such as HEL. We exhibited our smaller scale battery testing calorimeter which is used for basic research into battery components and chemicals; our system for evaluating larger packs – the Battery Testing Calorimeter (BTC) is rather difficult to transport, and we decided to leave it at the office this time...

I also made a presentation at the conference, presenting results of batteries tested for safety under adiabatic conditions and including data from cyclers integrated into the control software which allows charging and discharging limits to be explored.  Contact marketing@helgroup.com for a copy of the presentation.

What does it look like inside the Phi-TEC BTC ?

The new feature available on the Phi-TEC BTC allows you to watch the battery during a thermal / electrical safety testing, whilst charging and discharging.  Watch the video below (no sound):

Read the Application Notes :
BATTERY LIFE-TIME TESTING WITH BTC
RUNAWAY LI-ION BATTERY EXPLOSION DURING CHARGING / DISCHARGING

Novel uses for the Battery Testing Calorimeter...

An Adiabatic Calorimeter - or perhaps a soup kitchen ?!

Not only suitable for battery safety testing, HEL's Phi-TEC BTC has been recently used to heat up some very cold garlic bread, arriving nearly 3 hours late - due to the snowy conditions.  

Yes, the Pizzas were cold too.  We noticed that the wide diameter of the Battery Testing Calorimeter meant that all the Pizzas could fit in there comfortably.... Needless to say, however, that we were all so hungry we ate the Pizzas cold... !

Lithium Mobile Power .. Boston, USA and 5th International Forum on Li-ion Battery Technology... Beijing, China (4-7 November).

By Dr Jasbir Singh

This November, I attended  a couple of different conferences involving battery technology. Each had a range of speakers talking about safety, as well as other general research topics.

Safety is seen a major obstacle to development of Li-ion technology and therefore HEL’s involvement as a major supplier of safety testing solutions was very important. At both conferences we exhibited our advanced Battery Testing Calorimeter (BTC) as it is unique in being able to provide a single solution to for both small scale testing of battery components, as well as direct simulation of larger scale battery incidents, including the “abuse” testing methods specified by various protocols. At the Beijing Forum on Li-on Batteries I made a presentation, which can be viewed here ...